Cop Car's Beat

More from Slashdot.org - a bonus from COVID-19

The following posting is from Slashdot.org.

Long-Lost US Military Satellite Found By Amateur Radio Operator (npr.org) 69

Posted by BeauHD on Friday April 24, 2020 @08:40PM from the lost-and-found dept.

Tilley, an amateur radio operator living in Canada, found a "zombie" military satellite that was supposed to shut down in 1972. NPR reports: Recently, Tilley got interested in a communications satellite he thought might still be alive -- or at least among the living dead. LES-5, built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory, was launched in 1967. Tilley was inspired by another amateur who in 2016 had found LES-1, an earlier satellite built by the same lab. What was intriguing to him about LES-5 was that if it was still working, it might be the oldest functioning satellite still in geostationary orbit. By scouring the Internet, he found a paper describing the radio frequency that LES-5, an experimental military UHF communications satellite, should be operating on -- if it was still alive. So he decided to have a look.

"This required the building of an antenna, erecting a new structure to support it. Pre-amps, filters, stuff that takes time to gather and put all together," he says. "When you have a family and a busy business, you don't really have a lot of time for that," he says. But then came the COVID-19 pandemic. British Columbia, where Tilley lives, was on lockdown. Like many of us, suddenly Tilley had time on his hands. He used it to look for LES-5, and on March 24, he hit the ham radio equivalent of pay dirt. While Tilley thinks it may be possible to send commands to the satellite, the MIT lab that built LES-5 didn't comment on the matter when NPR inquired.

 

For more information, go to NPR's posting and/or a Riddles in the Sky posting.

One more time I was faked out.

Having watched the miniature swing that hangs from the ceiling of our front porch for a new nest built by house finches and seeing none, I gave up a couple of weeks ago. In the meantime, Hunky Husband has told me of seeing an adult house finch in the swing on occasion. However, I still saw no nest - just a few assorted pieces of western cedar mulch. Today, I happened to glance up through the window that is above our front door and note two gaping mouths and hairy heads. New babies! The adults had built a nest that was so low that it wasn't visible from my height (or lack thereof). In addition, I noted that Mama Bluebird seems to be feeding babies, regardless of the fact that (atypically) we had been unable to determine that the bluebirds were nesting in our nesting box, this year.

I must become more observant!

And, just because it is still so pretty, another photo (below) of the Prairie Pink dogwood tree. The blossoms are nearly red when they first open, but fad out to pink as they age.

Come here!

Each weekday at about 4:30pm, Hunky Husband appears at my door (I am in my den, reading) to announce that he is going up the street to fetch our mail. "Okay", I say. Today, he had barely gotten out the door to the garage, through which he normally traverses, when he came back inside to say, "Come here!" I quickly changed to my driving glasses, slipped into some slides, and went out to see what was happening. Below are photos of what I saw.

After I came back inside, a couple of the neighbors saw HH out there with the turtle, thought that the turtle was heading across the street to the pond, and decided that they did not wish to have such a large turtle in the pond. They talked HH into letting them load the turtle into our garden cart and took it back into our woods to let it loose near the creek.

I'm hoping that the neighbor did not injure the turtle when he scooped it up with a shovel to put it into the cart - or - when he dumped the turtle back out of the cart. I should have stayed outside a bit longer to supervise, I guess.

Someone who knows about such critters might be kind enough to identify the above turtle. My guess is that it is a common box turtle. If so, the more usual size that I've seen is shown in the photo, below, of Dudette with a box turtle in 1963

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ADDITION OF 4/21/2020 - Snapping Turtle

I think that Stu's suggestion of our reptile's being a snapping turtle has much merit - attested to by size and by the size/shape of its bottom shell. The photo, below is from Wikipedia.

Below is a closeup of our critter's head.

Tom Lehrer mp3 files: a-i

Alma - Tom Lehrer

Be Prepared - Tom Lehrer

Bright College Days - Tom Lehrer

Christmas Carol A - Tom Lehrer

Elements The - Tom Lehrer

Fight Fiercely Harvard - Tom Lehrer

George Murphy - Tom Lehrer

Hunting Song The - Tom Lehrer

I Wanna Go Back to Dixie - Tom Lehrer

In Old Mexico - Tom Lehrer

Irish Ballad The - Tom Lehrer

It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier - Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer mp3 files: j-p

Lobachevsky - Tom Lehrer

L-Y - Tom Lehrer

Masochism Tango The (Original) - Tom Lehrer

My Home Town - Tom Lehrer

N Apostrophe T - Tom Lehrer

National Brotherhood Week - Tom Lehrer

New Math - Tom Lehrer

Oedipus Rex - Tom Lehrer

Old Dope Peddler The - Tom Lehrer

Poisoning Pigeons In The Park (Original) - Tom Lehrer

Pollution - Tom Lehrer

 

Tom Lehrer mp3 files: q-z

She's My Girl - Tom Lehrer

Silent E - Tom Lehrer

Smut - Tom Lehrer

So Long Mom (A Song for World War III) - Tom Lehrer

The Wild West Is Where I Want to Be - Tom Lehrer

Vatican Rag The - Tom Lehrer

We Will All Go Together When We Go - Tom Lehrer

Wernher Von Braun - Tom Lehrer

When You Are Old and Grey - Tom Lehrer

Who's Next - Tom Lehrer

 

MEV-1

For the first time, a spacecraft has returned an aging satellite to service

It’s a big step forward for satellite servicing.

Eric Berger - 4/17/2020, 8:21 AM

 

In a triumph for the nascent industry of "satellite servicing," an aging communications satellite has returned to service in geostationary orbit.

Northrop Grumman announced Friday that its Mission Extension Vehicle-1, or MEV-1, has restored the Intelsat 901 satellite and relocated it into a position to resume operations.

....

For more of the story and a great video, please click on the above title that is linked to the Ars Technica article.

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Disclosure: Each month I draw a pension check from Northrop Grumman. They know nothing of my blog and/or postings so no endorsement of any sort is implied.

These made me laugh.

Today's being Wonderful Granddaughter's birthday, and WGD's being a nurse, I sent her the cartoon, below. (I don't recall where I had found it.)

ADDITION OF 4/18/2020 - An advertisement worth watching (from SNL)

Dogwood Saga

April 5, 2018, I had a Prairie Pink dogwood tree planted just on the inner edge of our woods. Dogwoods are an understory tree, so it seemed the perfect spot. And it was. Except: That year, we had a record cold spell of 18 degrees Fahrenheit the night of April 6, 2018. Great timing on my part. (Actually, I had purchased the tree a few weeks earlier, in March, and the nursery got around to planting it in April.)

On April 6, 2018, I wrapped the tree up to protect it - Readying for freeze. It did well, pulling through the freeze, beautifully - Effects of the Freeze. However, the tree all but died in the winter. When the nursery guy came out to plant the Texas Whitebud tree in April 2019, he examined the dogwood tree and its one little blossom, and pronounced that the nursery would replace the tree. They did - in May 2019. This spring was to be the replacement tree's first year to bloom, here. I'll let you judge from the photos, below, how well it has done.

Although Hunky Husband thinks me a nut for planting gingko and walnut trees, as I shan't be around when they grow large enough to be significant, he doesn't make fun of my planting trees that blossom, shortly. In fact, he has listened to my glowing remarks about how much I enjoy observing the blooming dogwood that he has given me "permission" to plant more small, flowering trees - well away from the house; but, he said he would be willing to mow around them if I gave him ample room. For several years, now, I've pursued the goal of taking out trees that are near the house and planting trees further away - fire considerations.

Facial Coverings

Although, as it turned out, I was overly ambitious in setting forth on the New Project of making facial coverings for Wonderful GrandDaughter's staff, in light of my aches and pains (there's a reason it takes me at least a year to make a quilt!), I have managed to get a few made. We'll drop them off on WGD's front porch, about 15 miles from us, one day this week. The coverings in the center are turned over to show the backing fabrics that were used in most of the coverings. I'm hoping that WGD had a much more numerous response from the quilt guild to which I referred her.

The coverings look small; but, the pleats unfurl quite nicely. The twelfth covering that I've made, the one that I use myself, is not shown but is similar to the coverings that are in the right column in the above photo. Any further coverings will, of necessity, be of a different style - ones that tie, rather than having elastic. I've run out of the elastic (which was a tad wider than it is best to use, but it is what was available). I'm searching the house for something akin to clothesline cording to use as the ties. If (as I think to be the case) I have none, I'll have to sew a 55" tie for each covering.